Hail Mary
by CarissimiMulier
Summary: In 2073, the United States Marines still have a long way to go in cleaning out the Chigs. Beginning in a long, bloody ground battle, sergeant Laina Johnson finds herself on Quaor, tenth planet in the solar system. Will the Chigs get what's coming to them?
1. Chapter 1

"Johnson, get your ass over here!" I managed to hear my unintelligible name over the din; the Chig rifles were loud enough as it was, and the fact that our artillery was pounding the hell out of their impossibly strong bunkers wasn't helping matters any. "Johnson!"

I ran flat out, crouching behind the pile of dirt that was my only lifeline, save for the rifle in my hands and my Brother Marines at my side. "Lieutenant!"

"Johnson, the Chigs are pounding the shit outta us! Our artillery ain't got any effect on their bunkers! I need suppressing-fire while we work our way around! C'n you provide that, marine?"

"Yessir!"

"Good! Give Matheson a hand! He and Wilman'll handle that .50! You think you can cover us?"

"You can count on me, lieutenant!"

"Get up in those ruins behind Matheson and Wilman! We'll be moving out once you get in position! Good luck, marine."

"Good luck, sir!" I nodded at my commanding officer and ignored the sick feeling in my stomach as a thick, metallic odor pervaded my senses. I always had to, even though I'd been around the scent of blood for so many months; killing, even if the enemy was extra-terrestrial, or even especially if, only made my stomach that much weaker. Add onto it the fact that my enemy never even knew I existed until it was too late, and I had a hard time swallowing C-rats, as good as they always are.

I patted Matheson's back as he reloaded the .50 cal with his only gun crew, Wilman, relaying the message lieutenant Danson had given me. He nodded in understanding as he pulled the trigger and released a fatal volley of lead.

I found a collapsed wall in the once-solid concrete shed that had probably stored farm tools before the Chigs decided to invade the one human colony in our solar system that wasn't on earth.

When the Quaoran campaign had begun, everyone was surprised, but they'd all done the last thing anyone had expected; which was just like them.

As Quaor's red sky and thin atmosphere burned with pillars of acrid black smoke, I gave a confirmation through my earpiece. "Alright, lieutenant. I'm in position. I've got your ass."

"And I've got yours, sergeant. Alright, boys! Let's plow these motherfuckers!" I watched as fourteen other men leaped over the wall of dirt and made their way to the Chig's right flank, where we knew they were falling apart; where we knew they couldn't cover themselves properly. And as they gave their warcry, I found my scope and peered thrugh the lens, finding nothing but dirt, dirt, dirt... all the way to a low hill with half a meter of a gap between the wall and the ceiling that I knew to be the Chig bunker.

The Savage 119-5 CB, the one thing that stood between me and death, I now found to be the most important piece of my heart, my best, most useful piece of equipment.

Although the Chigs hadn't yet entirely grasped the concept of the sniper's job, they sure were learning fast about what got them killed and what kept them alive on the battlefield when they were up against the United States Marines. In spite of this being true, though, a quick flicker of movement caught my eye, and my breath caught automatically in my throat as I realized that the Chigs were expecting my brother marine's approach. "Die, motherfucker." I squeezed the trigger, holding my breath and hoping against hope that my hammering heart slowed long enough for me to squeeze of just one precious round. That one interim between beats, when my two lower chambers and two upper chambers gave their job up to the aorta. Only four months ago, I would have felt a smile gracing my lips as the firing pin hit the primer, but now was not then.

My mouth was pulled in what I knew was a pained grimace as I felt the almost non-existent recoil of my Savage, and as I watched through the scope, I saw the Chig's head spray viscous greenish blood over the dirt as he disappeared from view. "Lieutenant, they're expecting you on their right flank. Advise."

"Roger that, sergeant." I could hear the burp of the alien machine gun on my officer's end of the conn. "Dammit, we're pinned down over here! These mofos have trenches stretching from here to fuckin' Toledo out here!"

"Lieutenant!" There was another cry on the other end. "Lieutenant, Lashing's been hit!"

"He's fucking dead! Leave him!"

"Fuck!"

"Christ almighty, Johnson! We've got one helluva situation over here! We haven't had a fuckin' break in their fuckin' fire! We need someone over here now!"

"Got it, lieutenant! I'll be there asap!"

"Fuck! Grenade!" The moment I stood sprung to a crouch to dash out toward our line's left flank, to mirror that of the enemy's right, I caught sight of a distant cloud of dirt, and the line magnified a blast so loud that the feedback actually deafened me in that ear for a moment.

Even in spite of the pain, I moved on, using the hillside as cover, only to duck not fifty meters from the ruins of the shed when a burst of gunfire pinned me behind an outcrop of rock.

The moment seemed like forever, but it ended when a man on an artillery crew sent a well-aimed shell to land directly in front of the Chig's bunker.

I dashed out from behind the rock and sprinted madly for a crater where a metor had landed millenia before and jumped in, where I found, to some relief, that I could now see where a Chig machine gun had been only moments before, its enormous bipod at an awkward angle from which it could topple any moment. "Lieutenant!" I said into the earpiece. "Lieutenant! Can you hear me?"

As I spoke, a small humanoid figure appeared from the junction where the trench down which I looked ended, while the other crossed it. The figure was only there for a moment, but it was closely followed by twelve, thirteen other figures, one of them with a slight limp. "Affirmative, sergeant! I hear you!"

"Are you in need of assistance, sir?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the connection. "I don't think so, sergeant. Looks like SA-43s. The Wildcards are here."

I couldn't believe my ears, but I couldn't look up. Even so, out of the corner of my eye, five Hammerheads entered the atmosphere at well above the speed of sound, sending an ultrasonic boom reverberating through the ground, lasting several seconds and ending at the tips of my fingers. We were finally making progress on Quaor.

And even with this progress, I found myself wondering how in the fuck we actually lasted that entire four months. By the beginning of the fifth, we'd just barely taken that bunker, and the Wildcards were rookies on our battlefield.

Still, they had us out of a pretty good pinch that first day they arrived... We'd lost nearly a hundred marines that day, which was only a small portion of what we could have, had they not shown up and dropped that one LGB on that Chig bunker. That in itself, even with the bloodshed, was a profound, gratifying moment. I had to keep in mind that if I ever met a Wildcard in person, I'd have to thank 'im. Because without them, there's definitely no doubt that we would've lost Quaor to the hands of the Chigs.

We didn't take that victory to mean that it was by any means over, though. There was still plenty to do, and this was the first dent we'd made against the Chigs in a long time, marine pilots or no. Even with Poseidon Field down, we had a long way to go.


	2. Chapter 2

When the armor Division came rolling slowly in the next day, the hull scorched, we knew something was up. The armor had never taken a hit that bad, but when we saw that the metal was warped, we knew without a doubt the Chigs had redoubled their effort to take and destroy our planet.

"Who's in charge here?"

The lieutenant was out on recon with a few other marines, and he'd left me in charge. "Sergeant Delia Johnson, 3rd Marines, sir."

"I ain't an officer, sergeant. I'm a corporal." The man with the dirtiest face came over to shake my hand. "Our gunner and commander were killed. Sergeant and lieutenant respectively. That leaves me in charge of this whole tank."

"What about the rest of them?"

The man took a swig from his canteen. "Agh, remnants of everyone and everything we had out on Mount Zeus. Even the sergeants and lieutenants can't decide who's in charge." He looked at me for a moment. "Just goes to show the amount of desparation we've got to keep these bastards off our planet."

"Just about." I looked around at the other marines. All of them seemed to have some sort of scars. "What happened at Mount Zeus?"

"We were pinned down in the pass. Lidar had us at forty to one, their favor. There was nothin' we could do. We rained shells on 'em dawn to dusk for three days, and they just kept coming. Have you ever seen them coming at you like a colony of ants, sergeant?"

I shuddered. "I think we all have."

The corporal had a faraway look as he continued. "Fire ants and sand fleas... you think those are bad. No. Those are an itch. These Chigs... you kill one, and there are a hundred to take their place. Like a fuckin' hydra, man. Like a fuckin' army of hydras." He looked at me, not really seeing me. "Eventually their armor rolled in, and the shrapnel their shells kick up... I've seen it tear tanks to shreds. That's how half the fuckin' Division got it. Their tanks can take a couple of hits, but we got 'em eventually. They had a hard time figuring out exactly where we were, but we were all over the place. We were on ledges so narrow that just firing the guns was a hazard. But we got the motherfuckers.

"So we're about to charge down this slope when a shell lands forty meters in front of us. At first I didn't think anything of it, but when our gunner wasn't screaming 'Die motherfucking Chigs,' I knew something was wrong. I didn't look back, but when we were ordered by the one remaining sergeant to hold position and fire at their armor, I tried to talk to the sergeant and the lieutenant. Our loader told me they were dead, and that he'd do what he could to keep us alive. He was loading that gun and firing it like I've never seen, even when the gunner was with us. It seems like with him around, he took out a perfectly in-shape tank with one shot and went on to the next one. I swear to God that when he'd just taken out a seven-piece column on his own, this one tank the rest of our Division had been concentrating on turned its gun to us when the Wildcards took it out." The corporal swallowed, and even I was trembling in my boots. "I was literally an inch from death." A lump rose in his throat, and without thinking or being able to control his actions, the corporal threw up at my feet.

I moved around and patted him on the back, feeling so sorry for him.

When he'd finished retching, I popped the cap of his nearly-empty canteen and said, "Don't swig this. Take little sips." He finished and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeves. "You okay, marine?"

He nodded. "Yes. Yes sergeant. I'm fine."

"You're white as a sheet. How long's it been since you've eaten anything?"

He was silent for a minute. "Two, three days? We were all tied up at the pass."

"I don't doubt that." I reached into my pack and pulled out a random ration. "Here. I can't spare much, but this is better than nothing."

"Thanks, sergeant."

The lieutenant didn't get back until after 2100 that night, and when I saw him, he looked the worse for wear. Usually he came right up to me and shook my hand when he went on recon, but today he just looked at me, seeing me but not acknowledging me, and walked right past. He didn't march the way he usually did; he walked. It was then I knew something was up. I counted the marines that came after him. He'd gone out with six other marines, and when I counted properly, I saw that only two had come back with him. Two.

Corporal Barnes sat down in front of me, a blank, disbelieving look on his face.

"Corporal? You alright?"

The man just shook. He didn't cry; he trembled visibly from head to toe. His lip didn't tremble. It wasn't that kind of nervous reaction. It was quite a while until I got him to speak. "Four other guys got it. You know who they are. Edson, Eddings, Carter, Xanda."

I couldn't speak. It was a minute before I whispered, "What happened?"

"Chigs got something else. Somethin' they learned from us." He spit up a little but didn't notice it. "We were down in one of those house-sized craters that's been here since forever. We were behind some rocks when it went over my head. I looked back, and there was Xanda, face gone." He trembled more violently than before. "It took us until we lost two more, with Carter left, that we realized what was happening. Carter was up on the lip of the crater behind a boulder. She said she couldn't see any movement, but from the time it took the report to reach us after those marines had been shot, the motherfucker was at least two thousand yards out." Barnes was so bad now that he couldn't sit up of his own volition, so I held him and let him cry on my shoulder. "She'd just started to make her way back into the crater when she went limp."

I stared at Barnes in disbelief, unable to say the word. To say it was an admission of our own defeat.

Private Hernandez confirmed my suspicion when he came over and stood, staring out at the horizon. "Chigs got a brand new weapon." Shaking his head, he spat. "Fuckin' Chig sniper. We were pinned in that hole three fuckin' hours before we hit the sonofabitch. I don't know how many rounds we fired, but we used up a lot of our ammunition." Hernandez looked at me. "You know the lieutenant asked Brass for that mortar? You know they denied it? If they'd given us that weapon and we'd been operating it, we would've hit the motherfucker with one fuckin' round. Christ..."

I stood when the lieutenant came near. "Right, y'all, listen up. Take a knee." We obeyed as the lieutenant did as he wanted us to. "Here's the situation; we've only just started gaining some ground from the Chigs. That's all well and good, but we've got intel to suggest that they have a new field HQ somewhere a bit closer to earth. Couple billion miles closer, if what Brass says is true." He breeathed. "Brass just sent a probe into the clouds of Jupiter. They've confirmed a solid core of rock and iron ore about the size of Earth. From what little else they could tell us, the enemy may or may not have knowledge of this core, and we know damn well they'll take advantage of it. We've been deployed to this battlefield. Here's the thing, though... Brass thinks the enemy HQ might be somewhere on the core. They've already sent a naval force to search for it, but that means jack shit. They need someone to search for the fuckin' thing, and that means they've selected an invasion force.

"That isn't the whole of it. We're going to be working with Third Recon. We'll also be on rendesvous with SEALs and Rangers. The Air Force has their air crews working on our ships. That's about it." He paused. "Any questions?"

"I know you said rock and ore, sir, but what kind of terrain are we gonna be dealing with?"

The lieutenant rubbed his chin, thinking of a way to answer. "Brass didn't say. They don't know yet, to my knowledge, but when they do, we'll be the first to know. And when we've found the HQ, I'll stake everything I have that they'll send a full invasion force in after us to help clean up the Chigs." He looked us all in the eye. "Everybody understand?"

"Yes, lieutenant."

"' Right. Get your gear together. We'll be leaving at 0300 tomorrow. As you were."

I sighed and picked up my rifle, then took out my cleaning kit and started maintaining the weapon, paying careful attention to the Quaoran dust that had collected since I'd set it down before the armor had rolled into town. The teracotta-colored dirt was fine and powdery, clods scattered throughout like what you'd expect in a week-old package of sugar. Some of these were clumps of the dirt itself, but sometimes I came across a rock or two that had somehow jammed itself into the spot where the slide met the wall of the chamber. These I easily dispatched, and although I was one of the most competent when it came to maintaining my rifle, even I had difficulty dispatching some of the dirt that liked to collect in the grooves of the stock, and where the stock met the barrel of the weapon.

A half-hour later, when I'd slowly and meticulously cleaned the rifle for the third time, I checked the scope, liking the way the sight lined up parallel with the barrel.

"Enemy artillery! Get your asses down!"

I hit the deck just as a cloud of dust leaped into the air and enveloped the entire unit. "Anybody hit?" I shouted over the explosion of another artillery shell.

"Stupid rock 'bout crushed my fuckin' legs, that's about it!"

The lieutenant started screaming orders to re-secure the perimeter, and while he did I slid on my earpiece, a piece of plastic three inches long that contained a microphone and reciever. It was one of the older ones, one that didn't monitor the vital signs of whoever wore it. Fuckin' navy took all the money and left the Corps short of necessary equipment. "HQ, what the fuck's going on?"

"Chigs brought in some of their artillery! Everyone else is tied up at the moment! Dig in and stay low!"

The lieutenant shouted into his own earpiece. "This is Danson of the Third Marines! The fuckin' Chigs have us pinned down with that artillery! If you can't minimize their effectiveness, we can't keep you covered from enemy infantry! You want to explain that to the families, or should I? No? Good! Get on it!" A shell landed close to Danson. "Fuck Almighty!"

In spite of the heavy enemy fire, Willman and Matheson were on the .50, covering our flank. There wasn't much as far as I could see; a Chig here and there. There were more hiding behind the rocks, but keeping my head up too long meant rising my life for a faceful of lead.

"Johnson! Sniper on that ridge!" I peered over the top of the trench wall and looked over the lieutenant's head until I could clearly see a ridge four-hundred meters downrange, sporting a fair outcropping of rocks that could definitely hide a small platoon of Chigs. Just as I was about to crouch and move toward the wall nearest the cliff, I saw a faint movement that I knew immediately could only mean my sniper was up there.

I moved over to Danson's other side and dispatched a ragged-looking Thurman to cover our flank, then set my rifle on the Quaoran soil and peered through my scope, which contained a set of three concentric rings before the crosshairs hid behind a laser-green dot.

At first, I couldn't see anything; the dust in the air was so thick I almost choked on it a couple of times, but with each hit the Chigs seemed to become less and less accurate. Soon, I could see the ridge without effort, and just behind a rock the height of a small sandbag position was a Chig sniper. It was a little smaller than the average Chig, but I could tell immediately that it had a bead on me. I squeezed the trigger slowly. My breath became shallower, and as I stopped a millimeter from the shot, my breath was nonexistent. My heart spent an eternity between its normal routine, and as my aorta filled I felt the trigger give slightly. I had shot the Chig, and I knew before I had cycled the bolt and chambered a round that the Chig had fallen before he could have done a Goddamn thing about anything.

"Chig down, lieutenant!"

I ducked down and moved over toward a rouch underground barrack we'd dug a couple of weeks before, taking cover behind a crate of rats that had yet to be moved into it.

Just as I popped up for another view, the wonderous, steady thump of the Abrams guns brightened my dusty day.

* * *

On the other side of the viewport, a giant gas ball of a planet waited for me, the red, orange and pink hues of its clouds swirling, while the Great Red Spot raged on like the enormous hurricane it was. As I watched, a streak of lightning split the skies of the behemoth fifth planet.

The transport banked, and I was given a better view of the Spot, as well as the asteroid field that now stood between us and open space. To say this view was breathtaking was an understatement; the stars shone bright and dim from behind that wall of rock and ice, the gaps in the chunks of debris more stationary than they show on television. Their fate, hopefully, would not be mine. And if their fate had been mine, I hoped we could obtain vengeance for their sake.

"Alright, cunts," said Danson, eyeing all of us. "We don't know what to expect from this planet, so listen up. Our reentry procedures are going to be about twice as long as Earth's. So as of right now, no long-range communications equipment, no smoking. Seats will be in the upright position, tables will be locked, and seatbelts must be worn at all times. In addition, no cussing, firing your weapon or jerking off. If you get sick, put your head between your knees. If we hit turbulence, keep your head." As though to emphasize lieutenant Danson's point, the ship rocked. Three other marines started cussing their heads off. "That right there?" he said. "That wasn't even a 'fuck me' moment where I'm from. That was a 'take your drinks outside' moment."

"Where're you from, lieutenant?" said a marine I'd never met until we'd boarded. "San Francisco?"

The lieutenant turned to him. "No, San Antonio, wiseass!" The platoon laughed. "If we run into a fuckme, I'll let you know. Until then, shut the fuck up."

As I was sitting next to the lieutenant, he turned to me and muttered, "You keep an eye on that one. His name's Baker. He gives you any trouble, let him know it."

The ship lurched again, and I had a feeling that after penetrating such a thick atmosphere, there wasn't going to be a spot on the transport that wasn't burnt black.


	3. Chapter 3

Stepping out of the transport airlock, I saw a landscape that wasn't as bad as the Quaoran surface; I saw something that was far worse. There were craters everywhere in the surface of the iron-laden rock of the surface. The ones five inches in front of me were about the size of my boot tread, but they were deep, and I had the vague impression that at least one of them ran deep enough to be a crack that opened to a vein of iron ore. The ones further out, rimmed on the other side by jagged rocks that could impale an aircraft carrier without mercy, were the size of large houses, and deep enough to bury a small skyscraper with room enough for seconds.

The peaks to our north were tall enough to just dwarf Mauna Kea. This, though, was not as impressive as the fact that they jutted out of the ground like jagged, broken teeth. The black rock that formed them was cracked and crumbled from millennia of being subjected to winds far in excess of anything that, as far as we could tell, anyone would ever find on Mars.

My environmental suit's HUD display confirmed my fear and then some when the eyepiece's laser scanner indicated that the winds were whipping us about at more than 1,200 miles an hour. The only thing keeping us from being blown away was the suit's tread, which was riddled with microscopic grooves and hooks. "Okay, Marines," said Danson. "We've got two hours to set up a perimeter. Tomorrow, 0430, we'll scout this bitch. Now fan out and keep your eyes open."

A Marine named McDouglas came over and scanned the horizon, his rifle ready in his hands. "Fuck Almighty, this is creepy."

"You're tellin' me." We were silent for a while. "Where you from, McDouglas?"

_(A/N: Hell, Michigan is a real place. I've been there. And yes, everything I'm going to tell you about this little town is true.)_

"Hell." I waited for him to explain, but he was just as stubborn as I was.

"Where's that?"

"About forty, fifty miles south of Lansing, Michigan."

I laughed; I'd never heard of the town of Hell. "You're joking, right?"

"No. There's a Hell in Michigan. And in 2004, it even froze over. The dam couldn't hold back the amount of water that was coming through, and when the water froze, everyone in town was slipping around when they opened their doors."

I tried to hold back a laugh, but I did succeed in snorting. When I was finished, McDouglas said, "Where're you from?"

"Maumee, Ohio."

"Anything like here?" he joked.

"Yeah. About the only difference is there're buildings in Maumee."

"Marines, I'm tracking something moving fast behind that ridge about three-hundred meters to the west. Johnson, take cover behind that boulder. The rest of you, spread out and keep an eye on your ass."

I propped my rifle up on the boulder lt. Danson had pointed out to me and sighted in for three-hundred meters, scanning through the light spectrum with my HUD eyepiece. "Nothing so far, lt." Just as I said it, a hulking, unfamiliar shape appeared, slinking impossibly from behind the rock across the crater. "Scratch that," I whispered. "One Chig." The finger that always stood ready next to the safety had already switched it off, and my forefinger was on the trigger. My heart was hammering in my ears. As that last millimeter stood between the Chig and death, I found the perfect moment, where my aorta filled, and as that last chamber emptied, I squeezed the trigger, pulling it back the last millimeter. As I watched, my round sent shrapnel up the wall of rock not more than three centimeters to my left of the Chig, and immediately I saw him tense and turn toward the disturbance. "Shit."

"Preston, Robbins, Johnson, with me! Don't let 'im get away! The rest of you motherfuckers stay with the fucking ship!"

The environmental suit minimized Jupiter's gravity, but it did nothing to keep me from sweating; weighing about seventy pounds on Earth, dragging it around on this foreign soil was far more tiring in a shorter span of time.

By the time I reached the rock where my round had landed, I was running on fumes, as far as air was concerned. A stitch was starting to form in my side. "He's over there, lt!"

Lt. Danson wasted no time in laying down fire. Even though the Chig had already run four hundred meters in the span of time it had taken us to get to this spot, two of Danson's rounds hit it in the leg, and Robbins finished it off with a shot to the head, spraying viscous, neon-green blood.

I turned to the lt. as he locked his gaze on me. "Sgt, I hope your ass gets used to being on Jupiter pretty damn quick! We might have killed that motherfucker, but we're here on a recon mission, and that means making every shot count, you here?"

"Yessir."

"Good. Now get your ass on point, Johnson."

Looking around and seeing my surroundings, I prayed to silent, absent stars far above the swirling clouds of this Godforsaken planet, where they were at the ultimate distance. "God, if you're there, we need a Saving Grace. Send us someone with a Hail Mary."


End file.
